The Longing to Leave - 1
Posted by JohnD
As I read through the web for conversations, questions, ideas about depression, I am struck by how many people who write to forums and blogs are desperately asking for help not for their own depression but for that of their spouses, partners, loved ones. So often, they report bewilderment. They feel stunned to find anger and rejection in place of love. How can it be that the person I have known so well is suddenly different, alien, hostile and wants to break out of the relationship that is so precious?
What is this longing to leave that so many depressed people feel? I have no simple answer to that, but I can describe my own tortured experience with an almost irresistible drive to break out and start a new life.
I spent many years feeling deeply unsettled and unhappy in ways I could not understand. Flaring up in anger at my wife and three great young boys became a common occurrence. I’d carry around resentments about being held back and unsatisfied with my life, fantasizing about other places, other women, other lives I could and should be leading. My usual mode was to bottle up my deepest feelings, making it all the more likely that when they surfaced it would be in weird and destructive ways. I’d seethe with barely suppressed anger, lash out in rage and, of course, deny angrily that anything was wrong when confronted by my wife.
I was often on the verge of bolting, but there were two threads of awareness I could hold onto that restrained me invisibly. One was the inner sense that until I faced and dealt with whatever was boiling around inside me I would only transplant that misery to a new place, a new life, a new lover. However exciting I might imagine it would be to walk into that new world, I knew in my heart that it would only be a matter of time before the same problems re-emerged.
The other was a question I kept asking myself – What is it that I am leaving for? What was this great future and life that I would be stepping into? Could I even see it clearly? More often than not, the fantasy portrayed a level of excitement I was missing.
Some buried part of me knew that a life based on getting high – on non-stop brain-blowing excitement – wasn’t a life at all. Maybe it wasn’t alcohol or drugs that lured me, but it was surely the promise of intense and thrilling experience, the perpetual opening scene of an adventure film without the need to wait for the complicated plot to unravel. There was no real alternative woman out there waiting for me, only a series of fantasies with easy gratification, never the hard part of dealing with a complicated human being in a sustained relationship. And inwardly I knew that after the initial burst of energy wore off, I would still face the fears, depression and paralysis of will that had plagued me for so long.
That bit of consciousness kept me from breaking everything up and leaving the wonderful family that I’m blessed with.
So just imagine what my wife was going through. She had to face the rejection of my anger at the deepest levels. At the worst of it, she had to hear me telling her she wasn’t enough for me, that I needed more than she could give. And the tension and pain between us, the frequent rage that I felt, spilled into the lives of my children in ways that slowly and painfully were to emerge over time. That is the hardest part of talking about this now, to grasp how my closest loved ones disappeared from awareness into the haze of my own self-hatred, my own feeling of emptiness that I was desperately trying to fill. I had no idea how my behavior spread in its impact, like widening circles in water, to touch so many around me.
I’ll continue with this theme and try to get at what can be done or said to someone possessed of a longing to leave.
I finally found part one of this. These are awesome posts and very helpful for me. I have these “threads” of awareness that the “new” life I envisage is not out there and it’s good go have it validated by you.
I know your experience well. thank you for so eloquently writing about it.
I just want to say thank you. My husband recently was diagnosed with maor depression. And this site is helping a lot with understanding what he is fighting.
Nanette -
Thanks for your note. I’m sorry you both have to live through this. Please let me know if there is any particular aspect of depression you’d like to hear more about. I tend to pick topics relating to what I’m going through, but I’m open to your ideas about what direction to take this in.
JohnD
I am not the depressed one in our marriage, yet I can relate to your fantasy of escaping and starting a new life possibly with someone else. The ‘someone else’ has never materialised – I have never actively looked for one, but it is the fantasy of escape that I dream of. I love my partner, I really do, and I have lived with his depression for five years, although he has all through our marriage displayed many of the symptoms you have spoken about – particularly the anger towards me and our children. There has also been his perceived disinterest towards us along with control. Maybe that has been his way of holding his life together.
I hope he can begin somehow to see that the anger is about him and not about anyone he’s angry at. Terrance Real calls that covert depression, though I think anger as a habit of relating to family, or rage, also goes with the territory of depression long after it has become overt to the person with the condition. It’s no wonder you fantasize about escape if you often take the brunt of anger that has nothing to do with you. I hope you can take care of yourself while your husband is going through this. I hope also he’s getting some treatment by this time. My wife often reached a breaking point and just demanded that I get help. After a while I had to give up denying that I was depressed and start doing something about it.
My very best to you,
John
My husband has been on various anti-depressants for the last 12 years. A few years prior to that he became sober, and for the last 10 years he has been drug-free except for the anti-depressants. We had 5 yrs of happiness before it all collapsed. We have 2 adult children, both alcoholics and their behaviour has estranged us from them. That was the catalyst that brought back his depression, and particularly his repressed anger towards me. He is either emotionally hot or indifferent towards me, and I became friendly with another man who showed me a spark of interest…sad but true. I have no romatic feelings for this other man but my husband is convinced I will leave him for this guy. I feel sad that I spent time with this guy only to feel noticed by someone. I believe my husband will never forgive me…he holds strong grudges..but we have started couple therapy this week. We have been married 39 yrs this month. I feel too old to start again, either on my own or with another man and he feels the same. Yet we are at this stalemate, both unhappy yet clinging to ‘what might be’. Thank you for this space to write as I have no-one I can share this with who will understand both my and my husband’s reactions to his depression.
I’m glad to hear you’re starting couples therapy. That was a big help to us at a couple of different periods. Sobriety is a major accomplishment for your husband since the combination of addiction and depression are extremely hard to deal with. But I would urge you to think about yourself and make sure you have the support you need. I don’t often give advice since I believe the best way for me to help anyone is to pull things out of my own experience – that’s all I have. But in this series of posts I break that rule and urge the partner of a depressed person to go get help. And I mean it.
John
Thank you John for your understanding and honesty. It was extremely difficult for me to write my last post and I take your advice on board. We have had 2 sessions of counselling and we are starting to get a glimmer of understanding about where the other is coming from. I am still unsure what the future holds. My husband is having a difficult time with the knowledge I lied to him about my friendship with the other man. I have defended my actions by telling myself my husband was not there for me and this man offered friendship, nothing more – but I’m starting to see how that has been such a betrayal, as I know it could have been the first step to greater intimacy. I feel terribly guilty about this and the irony of it could be that our marriage could end over it. I am trying to remain positive but feel so sad that it has come to this. Thanks for listening, it does help.
Depression can eat away at all relationships you have, if you let it.. This is something which i have struggled with myself over the years, I hope I am learning to cope with it better, it’s damn hard, but for the sake of keeping my friends and my love, I have to keep trying..
I’d love to hear from your wife. My partner often has flare ups where he tells me I am the one who causes his depression. He will have self destructing behaviour like downloading porn on my computer. He does this thinking I will get angry and leave. If I leave he believes he will have no guilt from suicide. His constant reliving anger from past relationships, even those that have ended 10 years ago, make me think that our relationship must not be fulfilling enough. The pictures of other women, talks of the ex and constant pushing away and blame pulls apart my brain. I don’t know if I’m making the depression bareable or just worse.He gets upset when his behaviour to push me away upsets me. Even though that is its aim. I feel like I’m being tested. Tested to see if I will leave. Then there is the good days. Where we talk all day, ring or text all day. Watch movies, cuddle, share meals. Those days I see my partner. Who my partner is. I love my partner more than anything. To face being yelled at and pushed away is so saddening. I’m give him anything if I thought it would make him better. If I thought it was me making him depressed I’d leave to make him happy. I’d travel the world to find a cure. But I cannot express how challenging it is having the man you love tell you he is just waiting for you to leave, to find someone else who isn’t (in his words) ‘fuck up’. Do these partners on the good days hear from their partners, how their partners really feel? Or am I always to know what the depression thinks of me and just presume by his presence that he loves me and likes me around? I just want to know where the strength comes from to keep marching forward. To become so dependent on the love even when its overcast by the shadow of depression.